Transcript

How to raise $172M for the underinvested, with Stacy Brown-Philpot

0:01 The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

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0:53 Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more. Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too.

1:20 Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. Everybody Wanted a thing for me.

1:37 After Task Rabbit. I want you to do this, I want you to serve on this board, I want you to be the CEO of this private company, I want you to be the CEO of this public company. The world nids A black female CEO. in this role

1:54 Day C Brown Phil Pot had just finished a wildly successful run as CEO of TaskRabbit, selling the business to Ikea, and she was trying to figure out what she wanted to do next. Not surprisingly, there was no shortage of amazing offers. Stacey realized she wanted to scale her impact beyond what she could do with just one company. So she launched a new venture capital fund with$172 million from investors ranging from Goldman Sachs to our very own founding host, Reed Hoffman. The focus of the fund is underinvested.

2:29 It means a lot to have sat in those shoes and to be able to see around corners and be able to help a founder think about. How do you navigate that corner? And that to me was so fulfilling in a way that I was surprised and I didn't realize. Stacey is bolstering the diverse founders in her fund by sharing lessons from her decades of experience as a leader at TaskRabbit, Google, and beyond. Today

2:56 She's sharing that wisdom with us. You gotta have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working out of a free bedroom apartment. Ten years later, I'm like, well that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it. This

3:30 is masters of scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week, Stacey Brown Philpot offers incredibly valuable lessons from both sides of the venture capital equation. The former CEO of TaskRabbit has launched her own fund. Cherry Rock Capital.

3:48 We talk about how to raise serious money, build a strong board, and the best ways to bet on yourself. Stacey, welcome back to Masters of Scale. Thank you. I was listening back to your last appearance here when you were in conversation with Reed Hoffman, and a lot has changed for you since the last time you were here. Will you tell us about the transition from being an operator to an investor? Wow, that has been quite the change. I've gone from running

4:19 a company by the quarter, really every three months you have OKRs and objectives and things that you have to get done. to thinking about what value can we create in ten years. So I have to think a lot longer term. in what I'm doing. Going from being an operator and running TaskRabbit, successfully selling it to Ikea.

4:41 I took a step back to really make this transition to think about what I wanted to do next. And in particular landed on the decision to become an investor and invest in the next generation of entrepreneurs, but it took me some time to get through the gymnastics of like, what's the right next thing for me to do? What was your process for making that? Decision. It's gonna sound crazy, maybe to some people, but I took time off

5:07 After I left TaskRabbit, I left in August of twenty twenty, which is right in the middle of COVID, if you may remember. And I did two things. I promised myself I'd say no to everything. For six months. And that was hard. I imagine really hard because I'm I'm better you got a lot of interesting calls. Interesting calls, a lot of interesting inbound. I lasted, if I'm being honest, five months. But I promise myself six months.

5:34 The second thing I did was a silent retreat. I went away by myself for six days, five nights, which I'd never done. Ever. I'm a second child. I live in a house in Detroit. At one point it was seven people in that house. I'd really never been Alone had room mate. In college.

5:52 So I needed some time. And I took six days to just figure out Who I was. decided that I love myself more than I thought I loved myself. And like I was pretty happy with my own thoughts. So doing that right after leaving Task Rabbit was one of the best things

6:10 for me to take a step back and figure out what do I really want to do? Like why am I here? What's my purpose? So people now ask me, if I'm leaving this thing, what do you think I should do? And I tell them, you should try to say no. Ей промесю. The good opportunities will still come. Because you're right. After the first couple of weeks, everyone's like, What about this job? What about that CEO job? What about this opportunity?

6:35 But They got Better. And then the best one came, which was starting Cherry Rock. The silent retreat, while you were there, was there a moment? Was there a moment of clouds parting and angels singing? What was it like?

6:47 My coach, I was working with a coach named Joe Hudson at the time, and Joe does silent retreats every year. And so he said, You know, Stacey, you should really do a retreat. And I was like, I don't need a retreat. I got two kids, got a husband We've been in covet. I've been sequestered. I'm good. But what was really going on is I think I was afraid.

7:08 Of What might happen? Like could I be alone by myself? And what would happen to the rest of the world? Around me, my immediate world, my family, my kids, my mom, my grandmother. If I was Not available.

7:24 For six days. And so I said, all right, I'm gonna try this thing. I'm gonna do the six days, I'm gonna try it. I remember driving to half moon bay and stopping at the safe way, buying all my food that I needed for those days, preparing to cook. And I asked my pastor, I'm a Christian by faith, I asked my pastor, I said, Hey, I'm going to do this retreat. I'm worried that I'm gonna be bored. And I'm not supposed to like engage in social media or anything in the news. So he's like, all right, I'm gonna give you some Bible scriptures to read. Like tell me some things you're gonna be praying about. So I give him a list. He fills up this Google Doc. So I go in and I'm armed with all my reading and my food.

8:04 And you know what happened? For the first two days, I just slept. My body was tired. Yeah. from just living the life of An executive, a CEO having gone through M and A transaction, having sold the company

8:21 And so I was supposed to be meditating for three to four hours since in the morning and in the afternoon. And the advice was if you fall asleep, just get back up and start again. Which I started doing and I kept falling asleep and I kept getting back up, but after the second day. I wasn't tired anymore. I woke up.

8:39 Okay, I can meditate for three hours. I don't need to do all this reading. I can just sit here. And just let the thoughts come. So it's a huge realization for me was one The world does continue when you're not around. People figure it out.

8:55 Number two. Your body needs to rest. If you allow it. It will take control. And that rest will happen and the clarity that came after that.

9:05 was just a centeredness. that I don't think I'd experienced in my whole life. How did that change how you were thinking about what's next, thinking about the world, how did that centeredness alter your perspective? Everybody

9:20 Wanted a thing for me. After Task Rabbit. I want you to do this. I want you to serve on this board. I want you to be the CEO of this private company. I want you to be the CEO of this public company. The world needs A black female CEO. In this role.

9:37 But that centerness brought me to what do I really want? What am I being led to do? What is my prayer leading me to do? And I was okay. Not Fulfilling someone else's expectations of me.

9:50 But Fulfilling my own expectations of myself. So looking at every opportunity from that lens really changed. how I thought about what I was gonna do. And so once I decided to start a venture firm. All those people who wanted me to do something else, some of them invested in my fund, super excited, to this day, send me great opportunities. They never not wanted me to start the venture firm.

10:14 They're so excited to support me. And I just had to leave them. in a direction that I wanted to go and they were happy to be. along for the ride. But there was a point when I was worried I was gonna let people down. Wow.

10:25 Where in the five months of no Did you do the silent meditation retreat? Right at the beginning. Right at the beginning. Yes. And so As these offers and opportunities were coming in after you came out with this clarity. Was it hard to say no to anything? Was there anything where you go, gosh, I know I said I'd say no to everything, but this is gonna be really hard to pass on?

10:48 Yes. Oh, was that any of those? Well Cheryl at the time, Cheryl Sandberg, who you know is a good friend of mine and mentor. was throwing a lot of opportunities my way. And those are hard to pass on.

11:03 Less on what they actually were and more because I loved working with her when I was at Google and I would have loved the opportunity. to work with her again. That was one of them. The other was a lot of people sell their company. This is very Silicon Valley. And then go become a B C. And so those opportunities came up.

11:21 To take on a real role at a venture capital firm. I did end up co-founding the SoftBank Opportunity Fund during that time, but I served on the investment committee. I wasn't an employee of SoftBank. And I said I'll be on the investment committee, but I'm not gonna be an employee, because I said I'm gonna say no pretty much to everything. So that one was a hard one. I didn't really keep my no, but I didn't fully go in because I wanted to give myself the space to figure out what I wanted to do. And also get involved in something that I thought was important. Why did you decide to say yes to the Soft Bank Opportunity Fund?

11:55 Well, I loved them. They were really good friends of mine. It was right after George Floyd was murdered. Everyone was figuring out at the time what they wanted to Do. And so

12:07 They were gonna Put a hundred million dollars behind it. That sounds like a good idea and it's something I've always cared about. What did you learn from that experience that helped inform launching your own venture fund? One

12:20 I liked venture. I had Thought about going into venture when I came out here to go to business school at Stanford. And that's what I wrote my business school essay about, and was president of the Venture Capital Club. Interned at a venture capital firm, SAP Ventures, but ended up going to Google and spending 20 years of my career as an operator. So this was my first time going back into thinking about the venture world and

12:42 In a meaningful way. And I liked it. Oh okay, this is a job that I think I could do for some time. What did you like about it? Meeting the founders. Talking to

12:52 different founders about the ideas that they had. The reason I didn't go into venture right out of business school is someone told me you should go get some operating experience, Stacey, because you'll be a better investor. I didn't know what that meant. I thought I'd get some experience for a few years and it turned into twenty. But it means a lot to have sat in those shoes and to be able to see around corners and be able to help a founder think about How do you navigate that corner? And that to me was so fulfilling in a way that I was surprised and I didn't realize. The second is there's no pipeline problem of finding underinvested entrepreneurs. There just isn't. If you Talk about what you want to do and do the work. It will happen.

13:35 And that's what happened with the opportunity fund. So you certainly could have gone and worked full time at the opportunity fund any number probably no limit of Silicon Valley venture firms, A plus plus plus firms would have been thrilled to have you come in. Why launch your own fund? I wanted to invest in the next generation of entrepreneurs.

13:55 And that's really why Not take a CEO job. And I wanted to do it. In a way that I thought Was unique.

14:04 And different. Which is why my own fund. I really saw this gap in the market, which was access to capital that I thought Wasn't being filled. By other firms.

14:15 And a lot of firms have great mission. Great values. Great people. But wasn't my mission. My values and my people.

14:24 And Until that point. I only backed founders, supported founders, invested in founders with my own money. And I was ready to be a founder. Of my own thing.

14:35 with my own mission, my own values, my own people in a way that I didn't see existed in the world today. The fund is called Cherry Rock. Yes. Why is it called Cherry Rock? Uh goes back to my upbringing. My grandmother Nickname me her cherry pie. When I was growing up, I was eleven, I made her a pie and She is the rock in our family. She's ninety six years old. Oh my.

14:58 And still with us, thank God. And so Cherry Rock Capital is about being the foundation of success for the next generation of entrepreneurs. How was it going out and raising the capital? Cause it's not an easy time to raise capital, no matter who you are, even if you're you. Yeah, it was hard. Yeah. And everybody said This was January twenty twenty three.

15:19 Stacey, this is the hardest time to raise money. You should wait. I'd never done it before. So I didn't know what heart really looked like, and you could argue now might be. The hardest time. To raise money. So I'm sort of glad that we didn't listen to those people. And we did it. But it was hard because I didn't have a team.

15:39 I co-founded it with Seda Howard, who was at IVP for nine years. So I brought somebody onto my founding team. She and I went out and raised this fund together. She had venture experience having worked as an operations Leader at IVP to compliment my lack of venture experience, but still we didn't have the whole team in place. And People were less interested in investing in first time fund managers and emerging managers. And so it was a challenge. But

16:12 Bit by bit. We just met people along the way who cared and invested in our success. Very early on, I shared my first pitch deck. with someone who's been in investing for decades And he went through slide by slide. And told me all the dumb things that were on the slide, things that I should take out, things that I should add. And he's like, I've raised.

16:34 Billions of dollars. And this is how you should position this. And that was so helpful. slide by slide. And so V dot one dot O of the deck became version two dot O because of that person. And we would not have raised a hundred and seventy two million dollars had it not been for his help along the way. The contrast here is so interesting because on the one hand You're getting the advice.

16:58 Stacey, don't do this now. This is a really hard time. This is a bad time to do it, which in hindsight was probably really bad advice given how hard the market is now. Right. So there's a set of lessons there, but on the flip side, you're getting this other advice about slide by slide tweaking the deck, which Sounds like it turned out to be really good advice. So How did you know to differentiate between what turned out to be the bad advice and the good advice? It still goes back to my grandmother. Grammy

17:25 Always told me that not everybody's gonna like what you're doing. Not everybody's gonna support you, but you just have to believe that whatever you're doing is the right thing and just go do it. And so even as people were saying, It's a bad time, don't do it.

17:40 Yeah. When else am I gonna do it? Yeah. It's kind of now. person who took me slide by slide I said, Okay, fine, you're crazy, but if anybody can do it, you can do it. I'm gonna help you. And so I learned to sort of follow my own North Star. And this goes back to the silent retreat of like being very grounded. In what I thought was important and being able to tease out sometimes

18:03 negative or Discouraging feedback is a motivator. And for someone like me who grew up in Detroit, it's almost always a motivator. Like you tell me I can't do something, I'm gonna figure out like oh Really? As opposed to like, oh, maybe I can't.

18:19 I'm usually gonna go in the like, oh really? And I'm gonna prove you wrong. Camp. Until I realize for myself that I can't do it. You have this wealth of experience at Google. I mean extraordinary run there, coming into Task Rabbit as COO and becoming CEO after it had already scaled a a fair bit and obviously taking it that last mile. So in many ways, this is really your first startup that you're doing, right? Yes.

18:46 I mean, that's hard. You don't have infrastructure. You don't have process and teams and people and software and all the things. I mean, you gotta like set up bank accounts. I mean, really like fundamental stuff. How has it been going from having all of this structure and support and process around you to really being you and having to figure it out and do it yourself? I spent my whole career Helping other people's ideas. Grow and flourish. But I never really bet on myself.

19:16 In a way. That I was starting from ground zero. And Now I get to do that. Yeah. So there's a part of me that's extremely fulfilled.

19:27 And satisfied. By the decision to Go from zero. To one. With this firm.

19:34 So no, we didn't have the infrastructure, but one thing I did know how to do is hire and build a team. And a lot of people start a venture fund and they've got a lot of good ideas and they have a great network and they know every founder. But they've not been a CEO of a large organization before. And so I knew how to build a team. I said we.

19:53 If I'm gonna raise institutional capital from the likes of JP Morgan, for example. They're gonna want to see something solid in place. I'm an accountant by training. I want to see that in place. So that's why I hired Sata.

20:07 I brought Seda in to co-found it with me and said, look, we've got to build an institutional grade fund so we can go out and raise institutional capital and convey to the market that although we're new, We're gonna build something's gonna be around for decades to come. And that was really how I Thought about this zero to one. Still ahead advice from Stacey Brown Phil Pot on how to find or be

20:33 the best possible board member. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those who are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered.

20:59 Rana Al Calyubi On my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show.

21:35 Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford's CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and more on our YouTube channel. Is there

22:16 in the process of raising capital an inflection point where you know you're gonna get there What is that process like for you? Yeah, maybe not. You never really know if you're gonna get there. I had this sort of assumption. that we would raise the money in a very short period of time because we had a great list.

22:37 We had Great referrals. Obviously iterated the deck. We had some early momentum from a lot of individuals who were excited to back us. It's kind of like running a company.

22:49 All of these things are supposed to work, but they never really work out that way. So no, it didn't work out that way. I didn't know if we were gonna raise the Full amount until the very end. Really? Yes. Why was that? There were a couple of things that happened. One is the market Is just slower.

23:08 We started January twenty twenty three. We Had our final clothes and January of twenty twenty five. To two years. And when you look back at the data for a lot of first time funds, this is about how long it takes and

23:21 I was ambitious thinking I'll have to do it half that time. I was wrong. The second thing is we raise a lot of institutional capital. And when you're raising from Ford Foundation and JP Morgan and Mass Mutual and Goldman Sachs, these funds, these firms have a process. And their process is Three to nine months, depending on

23:43 When you start How much you know them already. And it's a relationships business, and you have to build the relationship over time. Most of the people we talked to said no. Just like anybody else, when you're raising, you're selling something, you're raising a fund. Most people we talked to said no, but enough people said yes. It just took the time to build the relationships.

24:03 Yeah. Do you ever get used to hearing no? No. Yeah. And people if they say that they are, I don't wanna know who those people they genuinely are. You never really get used to hearing no.

24:15 You put all your heart And your passion and your energy. I also never got tired of telling the story. Even though I knew that there's a higher chance that this person's not gonna invest in my fund than if they are.

24:30 Because I was so convicted about Building this firm. That I'll tell the story over and over and over again. What's the story you were telling? Well, the story is really just

24:41 Cherry Rock Capital, as we just discussed, is about becoming the foundation of success for the next generation of entrepreneurs. I want to invest in the next generation of entrepreneurs and take everything that I've learned And help them be successful. There's a gap in the market. which is access to capital for underinvested entrepreneurs who don't have access to board members like me, who haven't been in Silicon Valley for twenty years, and who don't have the networks that they need beyond the capital.

25:09 So not only do we bring capital We bring operating expertise and we bring networks. And that's different. When did you make your first investment out of Cherry Rock? We made our first investment in Q one of last year, twenty twenty four. And what was that first investment?

25:23 Coactive. We invest it in coactive. Tell us about Coactive and why you put money. Oh, it's a great company. So I met Cody Coleman, who's the co-founder of the company earlier in 2023. He's a PhD out of Stanford. And co founded the company with his friend who he went to undergrad with at MIT. And a friend of mine said to me, Oh, if you're thinking about starting a fund, You should meet Cody. I didn't have a pitch deck yet, nothing. But I reached out to Cody on LinkedIn and said, Hi, this person said we should meet.

25:56 He wrote back right away and most people don't respond to LinkedIn. Inbounds. Even from you. I've learned that people do respond to me. I would imagine so. I you know But I mean if you show up in someone's DMs, it's a little bit different than most people showing up in their DMs. I DM and he responded. So we got on a quick Zoom. He told me about what he was

26:18 building. I didn't have a fund yet. And he was closing his series A. And so I personally invest it. So for about a year.

26:27 Cody and I just built a relationship. And really thought about how I could help him as a CEO. The company is a multimodal AI company that helps businesses organize and analyze. information across video and image data.

26:42 Help them better sell to their customers. Great business. And it was right before ChatGPT launched that he closed the A. Then Chat GPT became very, very popular, as you know. And then as a result, everyone was like, Oh my God, AI. He wrote his dissertation on what is now coactive today. So I was just impressed with him. His leadership. His vision. And a year of working with him. showed me that he was gonna build something great. So by the time

27:11 The series B came around. We had closed some capital. We had not reached fifty percent. But one of our LPs said, get in business, Stacey, do some deals and show that this team can win deals and ultimately co-led the series B with Emerson Collective. And we wanna be value add. So with Coactive, we were able to demonstrate we can win the round.

27:34 I'm on the board of Coactive. A lot of ECs don't want to take board seats. Yeah. Why why do you want them? I'm not scared of it. And I understand What it means. I'm on the board of HP. Iconic. It's a lot of governance. I understand what it means to be a board member of a public company and a private company.

27:55 And there is risk. There have been bad things happen, the board is responsible for it. Bad things do happen. Bad things one hundred percent do happen. Yeah. But I'm not afraid of it. The other reason why a lot of investors don't wanna be on the boards, some at least what they tell me is, well, I'm not gonna get as much insight because when you're the board member

28:16 The founder doesn't want to talk to you as much. And that's just True. I found so far we have three portfolio companies that we have access, we have information, we're adding value in a way that I think is useful for the company. And having been a CEO, I don't get to run the company. I just get to tell you what I think and you get to take all those inputs, including mine, and make decisions. Is that hard? I mean, are there moments where you're just like itching to jump into that chair and and fix the thing or make the decisions differently? Like do you struggle with that ever?

28:48 Sometimes. Yeah. I have to admit it. There are days when I say Wow, if it were me, this is what I would do right away. But then I remember I have had board members say to me, I never actually say that. Have had women say to me, Well, this is what you should do. If it were me, I would do this right away. And I've sat there. Knowing they have no idea.

29:12 The twenty other things that are going on that are impacting My ability to do exactly what you're talking about. And so I have to remind myself that I'm not an operator anymore. This is a multi dimensional job. And that one little thing that you would do right away is probably not possible and they probably thought about it. Also, I mean I find

29:32 As a board member and with board members, the simple question of What's most helpful right now? Right, some version of that. Like are you looking for advice? Are you looking for support? There's a bit of a process in figuring out what's really needed in that moment. And having been an operator, I imagine that informs how you approach some of this as well. It's so true. I encourage a lot of CEOs to Join a board.

29:54 So they can learn exactly what you just described. When I joined the HP board, I was the COO of Task Rabbit. And the first thing that I learned Wise It's not about the advice that you give, it's about the questions that you ask.

30:08 the best board members in that room ask the best questions. So when I became the CEO, I now had a board that I had to teach. How to ask questions. And it was less value for them to me to come in and tell me all the things I should do. I'm here every day. I'm running this company every day, you come every three months for the board meeting.

30:28 Anything you say is probably not gonna be as valuable. But what is gonna be valuable is the questions that you ask. And so being a good board member for me Is about just that. How do you help? the CEO and the founder think differently. based on the questions that you ask and ask them, how can I support you? Yeah. This is a really, I think, critical insight I want to spend a minute on. I was on the board of a company called Buddy Media that um had a terrific exit to Salesforce founded by Mike and Cass Lazaro. What I learned from them serving on their board was

31:03 the best boards are actually managed by the CEO and founders. The board isn't managing them. No, obviously. There's governance, there's oversight, there's responsibilities there. What is your advice to founders who are managing a board for the first time or don't think they're great at managing a board about how to become great at doing so? This is Great advice. I

31:25 First of all. Don't Put a board together until you need one. And sometimes it's perfunctory and you feel like well I have to have a board. Think hard about if you're raising a C round, do you really need a board yet?

31:38 Maybe you don't need a board member until there's the series, eh? How do you know when you need a board? What trajectory is the company on? What vectors are you trying to capture? Is it go to market expertise? Is it Entering into new partnerships? Is it going into new areas? Are you trying to build your leadership team? Do you have the right people around the table who are asking you those questions? Are you planning to take real meaningful institutional capital where they're gonna require a board seat? because of it, but is that capital gonna get you to the next major milestone of the company? Think about those things because that's really what will determine whether or not

32:20 You should have. A board. Or not. As we sit here very much in the midst of an AI revolution, there's a range of optimism and pessimism around AI. Where are you on the spectrum of AI optimism and pessimism and and what leads you to that place? I'm optimistic.

32:43 I was thinking back to my first conversation. And the title of it was Keeping Humans in the Equation. It absolutely was. Which was f Yes. Because at that time We were talking about the role of how things scale and we were automating a lot of things, but ultimately you still need the person to put the groceries in the refrigerator. And here we are today in twenty twenty five, and I'm still optimistic about keeping humans.

33:12 In the equation. Well we talk about humans in the loop as a key part of AI. It's a huge part. Yeah. Even with companies now trying to bring elements of artificial intelligence into how they run their business. It's not plug and play. Yeah.

33:27 Because the data isn't secure enough or It's not a hundred percent accurate. It's 99.9% accurate, which is not enough if you're making decisions. It has to actually be a hundred percent. So you still need humans to do that point one percent. to get you to a hundred percent. And so just like technology in the entire time that I've been it had a career in technology has helped advance The thinking of us humans in our learning.

33:59 That's what I think is gonna continue to happen in the future, and I'm very optimistic about that. How are you continuing to learn right now? I read a lot. I listen to my children. Because now they're at the age where all the great ideas are coming from them. And I still meditate.

34:16 Oh great. What a wonderful place to wrap. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Stacey Brown Phil Potts transition from operator to investor is full of valuable insights. Maybe the most essential lesson is to find a way to block out the noise so you can get clarity on what you feel most called to do. For Stacey, that's dedicating her energy to helping a new generation of underinvested entrepreneurs. Whether or not it takes a six day silent retreat, I hope you can find some quiet and some clarity as well.

34:49 I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our senior producer is Trisha Bobida. The production team includes Masha Makutunina and Brandon Klein.

35:25 Our senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern, mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastanelli and Brian Pugh. Original music by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Le Tal Malad. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our newsletter.